• Instantaneous / instinctual responses

• Gene expression responses

  • DNA -> RNA

• Epigenetic responses

  • whet
  • study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work

• Instantaneous / instinctual responses

• Instantaneous / instinctual responses

• Gene expression responses

• Epigenetic responses

Traditionally it was thought that changes to the sequence of DNA were heritable while changes to the expression patterns of DNA were not

That made it easy to define adaptation as “heritable genetic change” and plasticity as “non-genetic”

But those lines are becoming blurred as we learn about mechanisms (like histone modification) that can make gene expression changes heritable

Adjust: non-genetic shifts in organismal traits in different environments (phenotypic plasticity)

The adjust response happens at the level of the individual and happens within a single generation

The adapt response happens at the level of the population and happens across generations

Strategies Dealing with Drought before the National Park

• Small plots in multiple areas
  
• Sharing plots
  
• Seeding at every rainfall
  
• Temporary migration
  
• Crop mixing

Strategies Dealing with Drought before the National Park

WILDLIFE: As drought intensifies, elephants compensate by increasing usage of areas nearest the river, including crop fields

HUMAN: Village communities respond by using fencing and altering cropping practices

What shifts (in space and time) do we see most commonly for organisms with global warming?

• Geographic shifts toward the poles
  
• Geographic shifts up in elevation
  
• Seasonal shifts earlier in the year

Example from insects: As ecotherms, temperature matters a lot for insect survival, development, dispersal, etc.
Insect life histories are very tied to environmental factors

• For example, a major effect of global warming on insects is to speed up developmental rates
  • can lead to faster maturity

• For example, a major effect of global warming on insects is to speed up developmental rates
  • can lead to more generations per year

Temperature-induced advancement in development is common and relates to a broader pattern…

Phenological changes: changes in periodic biological phenomena (like flowering, breeding, migration, etc.)

2003 meta-analyses found an advancement of an average of 2.3 days per decade
Remarkably consistent across groups (and that was 20 years ago!!!)

With global warming we expect many temperature dependent processes to occur earlier in the year

Even a few days matters…

Phenological mismatch: When interacting species are no longer temporally or spatially aligned (we will return to this in Chap 9)

• Journal Club message: Humans have high adatptive capacity..
  • what about short term change?

• What evidence exists? Past, present and/or future
  • can we acclimate to …..
  • what traits are plastic (or not)

• Be prepared to discuss what you found as well as your opinion on if it is possible

• Submit an article/finding on Brightspace for participation